What To Do When So Much Feels Hard

I wasn’t planning to write this blog today, but I had an experience yesterday that brought the message to me so loud and clear that it had to be shared. Here’s what happened:

I got on a call with my coach and started talking about something that I thought was completely unrelated to the pandemic - and then 50 minutes into our 60 minute call I broke down in tears because I just missed gathering with people SO MUCH.

I'm doing a lot to get my people needs met - I hike with different friends once or twice a week, I play games on zoom, have virtual happy hours with my family. There's a lot of fun and genuine joy happening there.

But it still doesn't take the place of gathering with people, in-person, shoulder-to-shoulder around a table, bonfire, or board game.

Here's the thing I realized on the call with my coach: There is a gap in my life right now that simply cannot be filled for the time being. No matter how much I do to take care of myself and connect with people in different ways, that gap is still going to be there.

When that's the case, there is only one option: surrender.

And then feel whatever feelings come up whenever they come up (which is WAY MORE often than I ever anticipated).

Maybe that doesn't sound very hopeful, but, really, there's a huge amount of freedom in surrendering in places you know you can't control. In surrendering to the very real constraints we are facing.

This doesn't mean you give up altogether.

No.

I still believe most of us have a lot more choice in our lives that we allow ourselves to take.

But you let go and surrender in the places where you had no control to start out with.

You let the hard things be hard, whether that's the pandemic or the end of a relationship or a person in your life that just isn't showing up the way you'd like them to.

I'm not a master of surrendering. Part of me prefers to put on a happy face and focus only on the good.

But I'm learning to let go and let the hard be hard.

And I've found an interesting thing in that process....

The same practice of surrendering to the hard also allows us to surrender to joy. And wonder. And so many amazing experiences, people, and feelings. Both sides of the spectrum require letting go and giving up control. Feel it all. This is what it means to be fully alive.

You will make it through the hard. You can handle whatever feelings come at you. It may not be graceful or perfect or the least bit pretty, but you will make it through.

To surrendering,

Heather